Idylls of the King Part 27

And lo, he sat on horseback at the door!

And near him the sad nuns with each a light Stood, and he gave them charge about the Queen, To guard and foster her for evermore.

And while he spake to these his helm was lowered, To which for crest the golden dragon clung Of Britain; so she did not see the face, Which then was as an angel's, but she saw, Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights, The Dragon of the great Pendragonship Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire.

And even then he turned; and more and more The moony vapour rolling round the King, Who seemed the phantom of a Giant in it, Enwound him fold by fold, and made him gray And grayer, till himself became as mist Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom.

Then she stretched out her arms and cried aloud 'Oh Arthur!' there her voice brake suddenly, Then--as a stream that spouting from a cliff Fails in mid air, but gathering at the base Re-makes itself, and flashes down the vale-- Went on in pa.s.sionate utterance:

'Gone--my lord!

Gone through my sin to slay and to be slain!

And he forgave me, and I could not speak.

Farewell? I should have answered his farewell.

His mercy choked me. Gone, my lord the King, My own true lord! how dare I call him mine?

The shadow of another cleaves to me, And makes me one pollution: he, the King, Called me polluted: shall I kill myself?

What help in that? I cannot kill my sin, If soul be soul; nor can I kill my shame; No, nor by living can I live it down.

The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months The months will add themselves and make the years, The years will roll into the centuries, And mine will ever be a name of scorn.

I must not dwell on that defeat of fame.

Let the world be; that is but of the world.

What else? what hope? I think there was a hope, Except he mocked me when he spake of hope; His hope he called it; but he never mocks, For mockery is the fume of little hearts.

And blessed be the King, who hath forgiven My wickedness to him, and left me hope That in mine own heart I can live down sin And be his mate hereafter in the heavens Before high G.o.d. Ah great and gentle lord, Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint Among his warring senses, to thy knights-- To whom my false voluptuous pride, that took Full easily all impressions from below, Would not look up, or half-despised the height To which I would not or I could not climb-- I thought I could not breathe in that fine air That pure severity of perfect light-- I yearned for warmth and colour which I found In Lancelot--now I see thee what thou art, Thou art the highest and most human too, Not Lancelot, nor another. Is there none Will tell the King I love him though so late?

Now--ere he goes to the great Battle? none: Myself must tell him in that purer life, But now it were too daring. Ah my G.o.d, What might I not have made of thy fair world, Had I but loved thy highest creature here?

It was my duty to have loved the highest: It surely was my profit had I known: It would have been my pleasure had I seen.

We needs must love the highest when we see it, Not Lancelot, nor another.'

Here her hand Grasped, made her vail her eyes: she looked and saw The novice, weeping, suppliant, and said to her, 'Yea, little maid, for am I not forgiven?'

Then glancing up beheld the holy nuns All round her, weeping; and her heart was loosed Within her, and she wept with these and said,

'Ye know me then, that wicked one, who broke The vast design and purpose of the King.

O shut me round with narrowing nunnery-walls, Meek maidens, from the voices crying "shame."

I must not scorn myself: he loves me still.

Let no one dream but that he loves me still.

So let me, if you do not shudder at me, Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with you; Wear black and white, and be a nun like you, Fast with your fasts, not feasting with your feasts; Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys, But not rejoicing; mingle with your rites; Pray and be prayed for; lie before your shrines; Do each low office of your holy house; Walk your dim cloister, and distribute dole To poor sick people, richer in His eyes Who ransomed us, and haler too than I; And treat their loathsome hurts and heal mine own; And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer The sombre close of that voluptuous day, Which wrought the ruin of my lord the King.'

She said: they took her to themselves; and she Still hoping, fearing 'is it yet too late?'

Dwelt with them, till in time their Abbess died.

Then she, for her good deeds and her pure life, And for the power of ministration in her, And likewise for the high rank she had borne, Was chosen Abbess, there, an Abbess, lived For three brief years, and there, an Abbess, past To where beyond these voices there is peace.

The Pa.s.sing of Arthur

That story which the bold Sir Bedivere, First made and latest left of all the knights, Told, when the man was no more than a voice In the white winter of his age, to those With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.

For on their march to westward, Bedivere, Who slowly paced among the slumbering host, Heard in his tent the moanings of the King:

'I found Him in the shining of the stars, I marked Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not.

I waged His wars, and now I pa.s.s and die.

O me! for why is all around us here As if some lesser G.o.d had made the world, But had not force to shape it as he would, Till the High G.o.d behold it from beyond, And enter it, and make it beautiful?

Or else as if the world were wholly fair, But that these eyes of men are dense and dim, And have not power to see it as it is: Perchance, because we see not to the close;-- For I, being simple, thought to work His will, And have but stricken with the sword in vain; And all whereon I leaned in wife and friend Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm Reels back into the beast, and is no more.

My G.o.d, thou hast forgotten me in my death; Nay--G.o.d my Christ--I pa.s.s but shall not die.'

Then, ere that last weird battle in the west, There came on Arthur sleeping, Gawain killed In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain blown Along a wandering wind, and past his ear Went shrilling, 'Hollow, hollow all delight!

Hail, King! tomorrow thou shalt pa.s.s away.

Farewell! there is an isle of rest for thee.

And I am blown along a wandering wind, And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.'

And fainter onward, like wild birds that change Their season in the night and wail their way From cloud to cloud, down the long wind the dream Shrilled; but in going mingled with dim cries Far in the moonlit haze among the hills, As of some lonely city sacked by night, When all is lost, and wife and child with wail Pa.s.s to new lords; and Arthur woke and called, 'Who spake? A dream. O light upon the wind, Thine, Gawain, was the voice--are these dim cries Thine? or doth all that haunts the waste and wild Mourn, knowing it will go along with me?'

This heard the bold Sir Bedivere and spake: 'O me, my King, let pa.s.s whatever will, Elves, and the harmless glamour of the field; But in their stead thy name and glory cling To all high places like a golden cloud For ever: but as yet thou shalt not pa.s.s.

Light was Gawain in life, and light in death Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man; And care not thou for dreams from him, but rise-- I hear the steps of Modred in the west, And with him many of thy people, and knights Once thine, whom thou hast loved, but grosser grown Than heathen, spitting at their vows and thee.

Right well in heart they know thee for the King.

Arise, go forth and conquer as of old.'

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: 'Far other is this battle in the west Whereto we move, than when we strove in youth, And brake the petty kings, and fought with Rome, Or thrust the heathen from the Roman wall, And shook him through the north. Ill doom is mine To war against my people and my knights.

The king who fights his people fights himself.

And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke That strikes them dead is as my death to me.

Yet let us hence, and find or feel a way Through this blind haze, which ever since I saw One lying in the dust at Almesbury, Hath folded in the pa.s.ses of the world.'

Then rose the King and moved his host by night, And ever pushed Sir Modred, league by league, Back to the sunset bound of Lyonnesse-- A land of old upheaven from the abyss By fire, to sink into the abyss again; Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt, And the long mountains ended in a coast Of ever-shifting sand, and far away The phantom circle of a moaning sea.

There the pursuer could pursue no more, And he that fled no further fly the King; And there, that day when the great light of heaven Burned at his lowest in the rolling year, On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed.

Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west.

A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea: Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew Down with his blood, till all his heart was cold With formless fear; and even on Arthur fell Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought.

For friend and foe were shadows in the mist, And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew; And some had visions out of golden youth, And some beheld the faces of old ghosts Look in upon the battle; and in the mist Was many a n.o.ble deed, many a base, And chance and craft and strength in single fights, And ever and anon with host to host Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn, Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands, the crash Of battleaxes on shattered helms, and shrieks After the Christ, of those who falling down Looked up for heaven, and only saw the mist; And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights, Oaths, insults, filth, and monstrous blasphemies, Sweat, writhings, anguish, labouring of the lungs In that close mist, and cryings for the light, Moans of the dying, and voices of the dead.

Last, as by some one deathbed after wail Of suffering, silence follows, or through death Or deathlike swoon, thus over all that sh.o.r.e, Save for some whisper of the seething seas, A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous day Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew The mist aside, and with that wind the tide Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field Of battle: but no man was moving there; Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon, Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave Brake in among dead faces, to and fro Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen, And shivered brands that once had fought with Rome, And rolling far along the gloomy sh.o.r.es The voice of days of old and days to be.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere, And whiter than the mist that all day long Had held the field of battle was the King:

'Hearest thou this great voice that shakes the world, And wastes the narrow realm whereon we move, And beats upon the faces of the dead, My dead, as though they had not died for me?-- O Bedivere, for on my heart hath fallen Confusion, till I know not what I am, Nor whence I am, nor whether I be King.

Behold, I seem but King among the dead.'

Then spake the bold Sir Bedivere: 'My King, King everywhere! and so the dead have kings, There also will I worship thee as King.

Yet still thy life is whole, and still I live Who love thee; but who hates thee, he that brought The heathen back among us, yonder stands, Modred, unharmed, the traitor of thine house.'

Then spake the King: 'My house hath been my doom.

But call not thou this traitor of my house Who hath but dwelt beneath one roof with me.

My house are rather they who sware my vows, Yea, even while they brake them, owned me King.

And well for thee, saying in my dark hour, When all the purport of my throne hath failed, That quick or dead thou holdest me for King.

King am I, whatsoever be their cry; And one last act of kinghood shalt thou see Yet, ere I pa.s.s.' And uttering this the King Made at the man: then Modred smote his liege Hard on that helm which many a heathen sword Had beaten thin; while Arthur at one blow, Striking the last stroke with Excalibur, Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell.

So all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea; Until King Arthur's Table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their lord, King Arthur. Then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land: On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: 'The sequel of today unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous knights Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep They sleep--the men I loved. I think that we Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were.

I perish by this people which I made,-- Though Merlin sware that I should come again To rule once more; but, let what will be, be, I am so deeply smitten through the helm That without help I cannot last till morn.

Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur, Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how In those old days, one summer noon, an arm Rose up from out the bosom of the lake, Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, Holding the sword--and how I rowed across And took it, and have worn it, like a king; And, wheresoever I am sung or told In aftertime, this also shall be known: But now delay not: take Excalibur, And fling him far into the middle mere: Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word.'

To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere: 'It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus, Aidless, alone, and smitten through the helm-- A little thing may harm a wounded man; Yet I thy hest will all perform at full, Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word.'

So saying, from the ruined shrine he stept, And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of the lake.

There drew he forth the brand Excalibur, And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon, Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt: For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks, Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work Of subtlest jewellery. He gazed so long That both his eyes were dazzled as he stood, This way and that dividing the swift mind, In act to throw: but at the last it seemed Better to leave Excalibur concealed There in the many-knotted waterflags, That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.

So strode he back slow to the wounded King.